Ball State University's athletic department was one man in the beginning. Paul Billy Williams, who founded the athletics department in 1921 and served as athletic director until 1958, did it all, including coaching all five sports of football, basketball, baseball, track and tennis one year.
"You'd see him before a game out lining the field," Bob Linson, who worked for Williams as a student, said.
Williams is also responsible for the school's nickname. The Hoosieroons became the Cardinals in the mid-1920s when the school held a contest that Williams won. He came up with the idea because of his love for the St. Louis Cardinals baseball team.
One of the biggest contributions he made was to the baseball team he coached from 1922 to 1958, Linson said.
Campus was more personal in the early years when faculty and students always stopped to talk to each other and everyone knew each other, Earl Yestingsmeier, a former sports information director and golf coach, said.
There was a mail room on the first floor of the Administration building that students checked every day, and that served as a place they talked, Yestingsmeier said.
Paul Billy Williams
1911 - graduated from Prairie Creek High School in Vigo County
1919 - graduated from Indiana State University
1921-1958 - Ball State athletic director
1921-1958 - Ball State head of physical education department
1921-1925 - Ball State Dean of Men
1921-1925 and 1929-1930 - Basketball coach
1922-1958 - Baseball coach (except 1927, when he was on leave)
1924-1925 and 1929 - Football coach
1935 and 1946-1957 - Cross country coach
1959 - Cross country coach at Oberlin College
1973- died
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